


jump into the fog

by mdizzee



Series: stills from the island [4]
Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: 1x08, Angst, Drug Use, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Heavy Angst, I LOVE SHELBY, Internalized Homophobia, Recreational Drug Use, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, this episode was so sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mdizzee/pseuds/mdizzee
Summary: Shelby’s obviously been crying; her bottom lip trembles and her eyes shine and there are tear stains on her cheeks. Toni has a sudden urge to wipe them away.The aftermath of their first kiss.
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Series: stills from the island [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064456
Comments: 13
Kudos: 247





	jump into the fog

**Author's Note:**

> In this work: WEED! ANGST!  
> In the next instalment: ANGST! SEX!!!!!  
> This was one of my favourite works to write so far. Thanks for reading!

It’s the most hope any of them have had for weeks. Day 16 and a plane in the sky feels nothing short of a miracle.

‘We’re going home, bitches!’

Shelby tastes iron in her mouth. She doesn’t want to be a downer, so she leaves the others. It’s the polite thing to do.

//

Toni watches Shelby go. You don’t have to be finely tuned to the human condition to see that something has changed in Shelby’s demeanour; some sort of monumental shift has occurred. Dirty hands grabbing the back of her neck, dragging their lips together. Toni frowns and takes a gummy.

//

The steel blue sky is indistinguishable from the wide, empty sea. Shelby stares into the ether, once again hidden away behind a boulder, once again with her cross pendant tightly held in her fist. She prays; the act of recital is familiar and comforting. 

Dot approaches her, all worried and understanding. Shelby’s not listening to what she’s saying but she hears her cadence; the Texan intonations make her think of home and her stomach is aching again. Dot is kind, tactful. They’d never been friends back at school because someone from a neighbourhood like Shelby’s had no business hanging around someone as blunt and, well, shady as Dot.

‘You’re not a bad hang,’ Dot tells her.

She wonders if they’ll ever make it back to school, and what will become of their friendship if they do. She can’t imagine going back to sitting in Tuesday morning Maths with Ms Morris, listening to her friends gossiping about Dot’s drug dealing and cargo shorts; not now that Dot has probably saved her life on multiple occasions. 

Sensing that she’s not getting through to her, Dot leaves, pointedly leaving the bottle of vodka on the sand. Shelby’s hardly a drinker, but she’s heard good things. So she drinks, shuddering at the taste.

‘God, in your wisdom, give me faith to be what You intended’

She’s too tired to properly dwell, to interpret what that line might mean. It feels like a pandora’s box she’s been avoiding since, well, since she was in her prettiest yellow pageant dress, kissing her best friend. It is so grossly unfair that despite her endless striving for perfection, she has, and always will have, one flaw in her that she can never fix. The vodka burns and her stupid retainer sits tauntingly on a rock; she thinks of the hours spent examining her smile in the mirror. Vodka sloshes out of the bottle and runs down her hands. She’s starting to feel numb, finally, and it’s enough that she takes the bottle and almost smashes it down onto the retainer, breaking the plastic into tiny little pieces. They’re the key, you see. They’re the key to her whole performance, and she hates them. They are suffocating; they are concealing. She needs them so acutely it makes her sick. Without those fucking teeth, she can’t go back to the old Shelby; the admired, the revered, the loved. The depth to which her identity is intertwined with a pair of fake teeth is comical and she laughs, sobs, whatever.

//

Toni has forgotten how good it feels to be high. Jeanette was some sort of dark horse because those gummies were potent as hell, and she’s so damn grateful for it. She’s laughing at exponentially dumb things and even her salty, sweaty shirt feels absolutely delicious on her skin and she’s so, so fried. 

She’s barely checked in to the conversation, too focused on how a seagull is waddling down the bay, but she looks up sharply when a flash of blonde appears in her periphery. Shelby is at the edge of the group, and Toni is surprised to see her loose, messy; it’s awkward and disjointed and Toni can’t dwell on her rogue behaviour because her stoned mind has zeroed in on Shelby’s admission about the hot tub and _ohmygod_ Shelby’s talking about orgasms. Her mouth goes dry and she buries her fingers in the sand, senses suddenly flared and tuned in, pulse throbbing. The short-circuit only lasts a second before she realises that Shelby is completely trashed, and Toni finds that the sight leaves her with a lump in her throat.

Fatin and Dot are flirting and it’s fun, but Toni’s watching Shelby, noticing how her brow furrows and her jaw sets as she stops their conversation, crudely changing the subject. Toni doesn’t say a thing, though; she’s too baked, and her frassed mind is unbearably excited to have fun, to get in the water, to horse around with the others after their sixteen days from hell. Leaving Fatin stumbling about on the dunes as she inelegantly strips, they sprint into the water, laughing at how they’re all moving so stupidly slowly. Hauling Rachel onto her shoulders, Dot charges at Nora, who screams goodnaturedly and leaps into Leah’s arms and it’s such a ridiculously nice moment after weeks of horror and they're cackling because nobody actually has any idea what they’re doing.

(Shelby sits alone on the beach, cross-legged and working her way through the bottle)

They’re only in the water for about half an hour until they start getting cold, so they languidly migrate back onto the beach and wrap up by the fire. Martha is still on another planet, giggling hysterically as she shows Toni a cloud that, she resolutely says, has the exact same nose as her uncle. Toni is so glad that they’re here together; she might’ve thrown herself to the mercy of the ocean if Martha hadn’t been here to experience every single shit moment with her. Mumbling something about needing to pee, she wobbles away, leaving Toni to enjoy the cool feeling of the damp sand as she squishes it between her fingers. 

‘What are...what’re you doing over here?’ 

Shelby has sat herself down next to Toni, probably much faster and harder than she intended.

‘What do you want, Shelby?’

It comes out a little harsher than she meant it to. Whatever. Take it up with her absent parents.

‘What do you mean, what do I want?’

Shelby’s obviously been crying; her bottom lip trembles and her eyes shine and there are tear stains on her cheeks. Toni has a sudden urge to wipe them away. 

Shelby’s voice cracks when she asks if Toni’s told Martha about them kissing, and she’s so upset, so desperate, that Toni drops the attitude. It’s not worth it. She wants to help her, she realises, so she tries to get through to her, past the pretense. Swear to God, she’s gentle, as soft as possible, as she tells Shelby that she can take however long to figure herself out. And yet, Shelby stiffens. She grips Toni’s wrist as she pulls close and Toni thinks she might actually kiss her again but no, her walls go up and she closes off, locks eyes with Toni and the fever of her gaze is disconcerting.

‘I know exactly who I am’

Shelby smiles, but it is humourless.

‘And I cannot wait to get home and get back to her’

Shelby is an amazing liar. 

//

Sitting on the stairs, listening to her parents talk to Becca’s. This was the first time Shelby’s life had ever felt out of her control. 

//

They’re huddled around the fire now, relaxed and well-fed, Marcus lovingly bundled up in Fatin’s best Celine scarf. Even Rachel and Nora seem to have made up and they sit in each other’s arms, Nora stroking her sister’s hair. Shelby can sense that she’s souring the mood but she can’t bring herself to smile, to be delightful right now. She’s all wound up and all cried out and the hairbrush tangling is the final infraction, the final reminder of her imperfections that sends her over the precipice; the facade shatters and Shelby finds herself in freefall. She’s spinning the fuck out and she’s sobbing and shaking and God, it’s all ruined. They’re trying to placate her and she can tell she’s scaring them but she can’t hear a word, can’t stop her hyperventilating; her pain and frustration, repressed for so long, is deafening, and she thinks that she honestly might lose her mind if she doesn’t get the fucking hairbrush out. She’s panicking, batting away Fatin’s hands but grabbing her scissors, scrabbling for them in the sand. She thinks of the worn leather of her Bible and kissing pretty girls and monsters in yellow dresses and blonde clumps fall to the ground and Becca Gilroy is dead and her heart aches so bad and she doesn’t want it, she doesn’t fucking want it.

//

She doesn’t know what she wants. Shelby lies on the damp sand, eyes glassy as she looks up at the cosmos, splayed across the cloudless night sky. Leah sat next to her at some point; they’re sitting in silence, looking at nothing. She’s trying to reassure her.

‘For 16 days, actual death has been hanging over our heads...and yet, the only thing I seem to give a shit about is love.’

Leah draws circles in the sand as she confesses. 

‘Isn’t that what we’re all afraid of- that we won’t be loved?’

Shelby says it out loud, but it isn’t particularly in response to Leah. Fat tears gather in the corners of her eyes and spill down her face. Stars fill the sky in incomprehensible patterns; millions of little points of light in an infinite void. She feels so fucking small, a tiny body under the vastness of the abyss. 

She doesn’t want to be alone. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This episode was unbelievably sad wtaf I love them all sm. Also Dot is such an amazing character. ALSO did anyone catch how in this episode Fatin says 'uh-oh, shark week for Rachel' when she gets her period.....then she actually gets chomped on by a shark? Amazing.  
> 


End file.
